Exploring Perceptions of Stereotype Threat Among Children to Guide Scale Development
Recent research has highlighted the role of stereotype threat in persistent underachievement, particularly for students from historically marginalized racial/ethnic groups. Stereotype threat is a phenomenon in which people from stereotyped groups experience diminished task performance due to anxiety that their performances will be judged according to a stereotype, or will confirm a negative stereotype (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Theories of child development (Piaget & Inhelter, 1969), ethnic identity development (Quintana, 1998), and social perspective taking (Selman, 1971) suggest that elementary school children may be negatively affected by stereotype threat. The current study uses applies a framework of stereotype threats (Shapiro & Neuberg, 2007) to determine the relevance of stereotype threat to elementary school students.
Methods: A diverse sample of 15 children (ages 7 to 11; 4 White, 2 White/Native American, 4 Black/African American, and 5 Latino/a) responded to age-appropriate vignettes illustrating forms of stereotype threat. A fractional factorial design was used to assign a subset of 3 vignettes to each participant. Post-vignette discussions were conducted as semi-structured interviews, guided by an established interview guide. All discussions were recorded and transcribed, then evaluated with a vignette-specific concept form to ascertain whether children recognized each vignette’s core concepts and eliciting conditions.
Results: Overall, children’s responses to the vignettes supported the assertion that stereotype threat is a relevant concern during middle childhood. Threats causing a person to question his or her own self-concept or opinion of the social group to which he or she belongs were the most resonant with the child participants, which aligns with theories of child and identity development. Children were less likely to articulate threats involving judgments levied on entire social groups by another person, which may test the limits of children’s emerging social perspective-taking skills. In addition to recognizing and commenting on the forms of threat and their eliciting conditions, children also discussed emotional responses to particular kinds of threat, and articulated consequences of stereotype threat described in previous research performed with adults.
Implications/Conclusion: This study confirms the relevance of stereotype threat to students in middle childhood. These findings can be used to inform the development of measures of stereotype threat in this age group, which may help guide school social work practice. Because stereotype threat is triggered by a combination of environmental and individual factors, school social workers are well-poised to implement effective stereotype threat prevention and intervention. Interventions focusing on strategies such as thought replacement, self-affirmation, and malleable intelligence may be especially appropriate for use with elementary school children. Expanding stereotype threat research to include children is recommended, with an explicit focus on using findings to develop effective, age-appropriate interventions.